Politicians of a lesser god
Why theft is now actually ok
A two-headed rat (see also: artist’s depiction of “Right Honorable” Stephen Harper)/Kyle Leitch
Remember a couple of weeks back when I said that the CRTC was essentially Big Brother? I should have known better. Any time any organization in this country is declared even slightly evil, Stephen Harper and his pack of dogs appear like god damn shape shifters to remind you of just how bad things can get. The new omnibus bill, as proposed by the Conservatives for tabling this fall in the House of Commons, makes theft entirely ok.
Allow me to explain. The new omnibus bill proposes an amendment to the copyright law in this country, whereby anything written in any media outlet can be used in an attack campaign without proper authorization from the originating media outlet.
“What does that mean?” the bleating sheeple ask. It means, oh gentle sheeple, that anything written about the government, good, bad, or otherwise, could be used to fluff up the public image of their own party, and any quote, regardless of how misquoted or contextualized it may be, can be used to attack other parties. All of this can be done without the original author of aforementioned quotes ever even knowing. You can see, I hope, how problematic this is.
Simply put, anything we write, be it notes in class, to blog posts, to this very article, is the originating author’s intellectual properties. Each word was chosen with a specific inflection, intention, or meaning. What the Conservatives are proposing is an ignorance of basic ownership laws. But that’s all right, since democracy works, and we picked the asshole in charge, so now we have to live with it, right?
Wrong. The message has been far too clear to the Conservatives for far too long. What we should have done is elected a bright-minded person of conscience to lead us. We got stuck with Harper, but that was the bed we made. Just because we made the bed, does not mean we have to lie in it. We can be restless. We need to make absolutely certain that the government understands that no matter how it may benefit your party, theft is theft. And theft, if the Conservatives would care to open that Bible they’re always thumping, is wrong.
If the NDP and the Liberals of this country hadn’t decided to take the moral high ground and not produce attack ads, then theoretically, anything I say about those deranged, money-swindling, filthy, rotten swine Conservatives could be used in an attack ad against that party. You know something? In this case, I would encourage it.
